Hello and welcome to the latest installment of Five Albums, the feature for paid Hearing Things subscribers in which we recommend you the new records from across genres that you need to hear each week. As music journalists, the question we get most often from friends is how to stay on top of what’s new and cool. This is our attempt to provide a practical answer.
In various thrilling ways, this week’s entries command your full attention. They are not lean-back-and-vibe-out albums; they want you to feel, to think, to dance, to remember, to listen up and engage with them actively, and perhaps to emerge a little different than you were before you pressed play. You can tell they’re not fucking around by the collage of cover art up there: two ghostly hands holding the moon aloft, a guy splayed violently on the floor, a mouthful of worms. (By some weird coincidence, two different blurbs contain the word “horrorcore” this week.) But it isn’t all gruesome: There’s also dance music that fuses the traditional and the modern in a push toward ecstatic oblivion, and a generationally talented songwriter confronting middle age with grace, aplomb, and a really excellent snare sound.
